President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month. AP.
Washington: US President Joe Biden who is 80 years old, will undergo a closely monitored physical examination on Thursday, ahead of an expected announcement that he is seeking a second four-year term at the White House.
Biden’s session with the doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Maryland, will be his second extensive exam since he took office in January 2021.
His last physical and colonoscopy done in November 2021, showed the president to be a “healthy, vigorous, 78-year-old male,” his doctors had then said. He had a polyp removed from his colon.
Biden, already the oldest American to be president, has often ignored questions about his age, and had a string of legislative successes in his first two years, but voters are concerned about handing him another four.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans- including more than 50 per cent of Democrats and the vast majority of Republicans — say Biden is too old to work in government, according to a poll conducted between February 6-13. Most Democratic respondents said the president remains mentally sharp but about half of them said he cannot handle the physical toll of the presidency.
Biden would be 86 by the end of a prospective second term, making him 13 years older than the average life expectancy of an American male, according to a 2020 US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
At his last physical examination, the President’s White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, declared him fit for duty and able to execute his responsibilities. O’Connor attributed Biden’s stiff gait to spinal arthritis and “peripheral neuropathy,” or some loss of sensation in the feet.
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